Office 365 Email for Faculty/Staff Proposal
SUMMARY
Email for Students was moved to Microsoft Live@EDU system in 2011 and migrated to Microsoft 365
this past summer. This initiative has reduced the cost of email storage, as well as giving the students
larger email inboxes. Information Technologies (IT) is proposing that Faculty/Staff email be moved to
Microsoft Office 365 beginning in 2014. This is one of the recommendations from the work of the IT CFT
in August 2013. Annual savings is approximately $13,000, which could start to be realized in the second
year.
PROPOSAL
While there are pros and cons to moving to a hosted cloud based collaboration suite, we are
recommending Office 365. Here are some pros and cons associated with this choice:
Pros:
Cons:
-
Users would have 50GB email boxes (currently 2GB for faculty/staff), 25GB for SkyDrive Pro
cloud storage (similar X:\ drives for personal storage are 2GB).
SkyDrive Pro allows users to easily share files internally and externally on their own and control
who sees and edits them.
Gives our faculty/staff the ability to use online versions of the Microsoft Office apps through a
web browser
Office 365 features can be added to individuals accounts, for an annual, per account, fee (i.e.
office apps for Mobile devices, mailbox legal hold)
Microsoft Lync could be evaluated as a collaborative tool to replace WebEx, though less
developed as a collaborative tool today
Decommission our current Exchange servers and storage, SPAM filtering, and software for cost
savings
Any concerns about having all Xavier users’ mailbox data, as well as other SkyDrive data, stored
in the cloud under a Microsoft EULA
Any service degradation or outages would also need to be reported to Microsoft for resolution,
IT would no longer have control over the delivery of these services
Mailbox backup and recovery, or any moderate to advanced administration not available to IT,
and must be performed through opening a ticket with Microsoft
The migration may cause disruption in accessing email and will be planned to occur to cause
least disruption to this service, over a 3-5 week transition.
Some features and functionality may be degraded during the transition, such as calendar busy
searching between our Exchange system, and Office 365.
RECOMMENDATION
There is an increasing demand for larger disk space, which creates storage and backup costs that are less
sustainable for us to bear. Microsoft leverages economies of scale, and is able to provide the increased
storage space without the overhead. Another growing trend is document sharing in the cloud, where
Revised: 11/6/2013
users can easily share files internally and externally and control who sees and edits them. Office 365
provides these services as part of our annual Microsoft campus licensing. On top of greater features and
storage, we will achieve longer term cost savings annually by moving to Office 365.
ALTERNATE OPTIONS (Comparing features to Google email and Office 365 email)
1 – Maintain faculty/staff email on campus
Assumptions:
• Students will remain on Office365
PRO
• Familiar thick-client and web access for E-mail
• Local Exchange servers for fast e-mail delivery and application response
• Prompt support on e-mail issues by Xavier support staff
• Optional thick client rather than browser based. Variations in browsers or browser versions do
not affect experience
• Some immunity to cloud and ISP network outages
CON
• Does not currently integrate well with student cloud based e-mail for calendaring and presence
• Possible outages during server maintenance
• No cost savings
2 – Go to Google
Assumptions:
• Students would also be migrated to Google Mail
PRO
• Mobility enhancements for android phones
• Better social media integration with Google+
• Faster and more customizable e-discovery with Postini
• Annual savings of $13,000
CON
• Significant investment in money, time, and retraining to adapt or replace infrastructure to
accommodate Google mail
• High one-time cost for professional services for technical migration
• Security and directory integration via LDAP rather than native Active Directory
• Minimal implementation of transport rules for mail routing
• Dissimilar (from Outlook) simplified e-mail interface. Absence of "reminder" feature
• Lower bulk mail limits 2,000/500 internal/external limit
• Additional staff/faculty training requirement
Revised: 11/6/2013